Jarred Kelenic Optioned to Tacoma
Jarred Kelenic, the talk of baseball after hitting three extra-base hits in his second MLB game, is in the midst of an 0-39 slump. Days after Scott Servais said publicly that he wasn’t worried about Kelenic, the M’s decided to option him back to Tacoma. For a prospect the club itself had hyped up even as it messed with his service time, this was a tough blow. What went wrong here, and who’s to blame?
There are essentially three things that could be happening here. Kelenic could simply not be as good as the hype around him; all of the evaluators, all of the minor league numbers – it could all be wrong, somehow. Or, perhaps the Mariners were right to insist on giving him more seasoning in the minors – perhaps the discussion about how many minor league PAs he’d amassed or how many upper-minors games wasn’t just a post-hoc rationalization, but was based on something real. Finally, we could be seeing an odd combination of bad luck plus an unprecedented gap between the minors and majors. Let’s take a look at each.
Is Kelenic a hype-job, and simply not anywhere near as good as people have said?
No.
That’s it? Just “No?”
Seriously, no. There’s far too much evidence that he deserves the hype. He’s a top-10-in-baseball prospect, and has been for a year. He’s posted modest strikeout rates, and hit for power at essentially every stop along the way, and particularly in the M’s system. He struck out all of one time in the Cactus League, and while all of these stops are, kind of by definition small samples, they’re small because he hit so consistently and well. He’s seen decent pitching – not amazing, by any stretch – and dominated it at every level, save one. This is not a high draft pick getting by on so-so stats, and this is not a random guy putting up a good line in high-A. This is a player *universally* judged to be one of the best young prospects in the game, who has put up the numbers befitting that designation. Kelenic wasn’t over-hyped, he was simply under-lucked, and then started pressing. Does he have things to work on? Yes, of course. He wasn’t hitting the ball hard in recent games, and while he wasn’t striking out at alarming rates, his K rate was pretty elevated. He needs to adjust, but is not a bad hitter by any stretch of the imagination.
So, were the M’s right to insist on getting him more seasoning?
No.
Wait, this ag
…No, sorry. The problem here is that the M’s gave the game away when they admitted that they would have brought him up in *2020* had he signed a team-friendly extension. I’m not good enough to determine exactly when a prospect is “ready,” but the M’s had decided months and months before they finally brought him up. As much as they’d like to memory-hole this, as much as it might be a helpful way to shut down complaints from a long-suffering fan base, Kelenic’s struggles do not retroactively prove the wisdom of Jerry Dipoto’s comments about his lack of professional PAs. If *the Mariners* believed any of that, they would not have brought him north after less than 30 AAA plate appearances. There’s no way to argue that those 29 PAs taught the M’s something that they didn’t already know, but it did save them the embarrassment of bringing him up before the minor league season started.
The issue isn’t simply that he didn’t have many minor league PAs, it’s that the outcry over his “manipulation” was so great, the M’s felt forced to bring him up before a more rational timeline would dictate.
Again, the M’s were perfectly content to bring him up in September of 2020. In a vacuum, you could make this claim, that the front office was somehow bamboozled by fans, talk radio, national baseball writers, whatever. That would not reflect well on the front office, but you could make that argument. The problem is that, thanks to the Bellevue Rotary Hour of Candor, we know what really happened – no one is guessing, no one is putting words in anyone’s mouth, no one is pretending to have access when all they have is an opinion. Would a more traditional amount of upper-minors seasoning have helped Kelenic? Maybe, though I’m not even sure we know that for sure, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute. But what we do know is that Kelenic had cleared whatever threshold the M’s set for him a season ago.
So what’s all this about the gap between the high minors and MLB?
Ok, thanks for asking, this is essentially why I’m writing this post. What I mean is that, for a variety of reasons, the long-standing relationship between AAA stats and MLB stats isn’t holding. Using the league translations from Clay Davenport, who’s been doing this for ages, and pioneered some of the league adjustments/projections for Baseball Prospectus back in the day, Jose Marmolejos’ AAA line is the equivalent of a big league slash line of .333/.415/.556 line. Are you, uh, taking the over or the under on that?
Here’s what I wanted to show you. In 2021, ten players have played for both the Mariners and the Rainiers. They range from uber-prospects like Kelenic to minor league roster churn like Eric Campbell, but we’ll add them all up to give us a larger sample. Those ten players, collectively, have 358 PAs in Tacoma and 583 in Seattle. In Tacoma, they had an average of .324 and slugged .571. Their strikeout rate was 20.3% and their walk rate was 8.9%. If this was one player, we would be ecstatic – there’s a reasonable amount of plate discipline, a lot of bat-to-ball skill, and plenty of power. You’d need to shrink all of those numbers (er, except the strikeout rate), but you’re starting from a really good spot.
In Seattle, these same players have hit .170, and slugged .306. Their K rate is just over 25%, and the walk rate is 8.1%. The K:BB stuff is *more or less* what we’d expect; there’s nothing shocking with an uptick in Ks and a slight drop in walks. What *is* noteworthy is the utter lack of, you know, hits. ISO is down over 100 points as well. These may as well be two completely different groups.
Is this due to spin and sticky substances and the general inhuman level of MLB pitching?
That’s a piece of it, but probably not a huge piece. Here’s a table of how well MLB rookies have fared at the plate in every season since 2009. It’s early yet, but 2021’s crop has produced the lowest wRC+ of any year in our sample. But it’s not *freakishly* low – the 2014 wRC+ of 80 is nearly identical to this year’s 79. Maybe the lesson is, whenever hitting is down in general, rookies will fare worse.
But some rookies – as always – are faring just fine. The M’s couldn’t figure out Adolis Garcia in their recent series with Texas, and they’re not alone. And as much as the talk about spin rate and artificial means to enhance it has taken off, the league-wide changes aren’t *that* big. Fastball spin is up a bit, but so is velo, and neither is up all that much. They’re up in ways that they’ve been up before, meaning the mere fact that they’ve changed cannot explain all of :gestures broadly: this.
What’s causing this? I think there several interconnected things, but it’s definitely not simply that major league pitching is completely unrecognizable to minor league hitters. It’s better than AAA pitching, but it’s *always* been better than AAA pitching. The question is what’s different *now?* One easy answer is the baseball. MLB changed the ball, making it lighter, and thus capable of more break. But it’s also deadened, so it doesn’t fly as far. AAA uses major league baseball…balls. They’re made at the same factory in Costa Rica, and completely different from the balls used in the lower levels (which are made in China). But this year, AAA is using all of the balls that went unused last year, when the season was wiped out by Covid. Thus, they’re using a ball that flies farther, but perhaps spins slightly less. Is this enough to explain the vast chasm between a .170/.306 line and a .324/.571 one? No, it’s probably not, but it might help explain why batters are struggling so much. It doesn’t help that so many of the AAA-West environments are at altitude, which further restricts pitch break. Now, that shouldn’t matter to Kelenic, who only played in Tacoma – not on the road. But anything that makes a slider look different helps shed some light on what’s going on here.
And seriously, does anyone think that minor leagues haven’t discovered sticky substances beyond pine tar? If big leaguers found SpiderTack, and there’s now a huge wage premium associated with spin rates…do you think that no one in the minor leagues has heard of it/ordered it online?
Does that mean that Kelenic’s been sent to work on things that don’t really have relevance to MLB hitting?
I mean, kind of, right? If these numbers mean anything (and it’s not just the M’s; Padres prospect Luis Campusano’s line is worse than Kelenic’s, though to be fair, he wasn’t exactly tearing it up in AAA), they mean that hitting a ton in AAA is no guarantee of anything. Given what we know about the baseballs, there’s *some* reason to believe this isn’t mere small-sample noise. So is seeing more of the pitches he knows how to hit going to teach Kelenic about the pitches he doesn’t yet know how to hit? Part of it must be getting him comfortable again, as happened with Taylor Trammell, who went from scuffling to impossible-to-get-out as soon as he went down, and, importantly, has looked better since his return. Beyond spin rates and the average weight of a regulation baseball and slider sweep, there really is something to being confident and knowing you can do something. Here’s hoping Kelenic can get back to that. Here’s hoping the M’s can make that transition, and that learning process, something easy for him to incorporate.
If the problem isn’t Kelenic, is it the M’s?
This is THE question. The club has built a reputation for being a player development colossus, but that reputation hasn’t translated into big league success at this point. I don’t mean to imply that it’s all smoke and mirrors – there are clear, demonstrated cases of players who didn’t project as big leaguers becoming big leaguers, and fringe big leaguers becoming excellent players. But Kelenic’s merely the latest player with some momentum through the minor leagues to absolutely face-plant. The team’s built its player dev name around pitching, but they’ve helped plenty of minor league hitters, too. But something seems to trip them up when they hit the big leagues. Evan White is probably the textbook example here, as he showed no real sign of the contact problems that sunk his 2020 nor the slap-hitting that’s plagued his 2021. All of that development wasn’t able to help him in the bigs, like it didn’t help Kelenic. While JP Crawford’s looked revelatory in the past week or two, the same could be said of him, even as a player with some big league time in another org: the M’s didn’t just help him work on the problems he had, they seemingly gave him new problems. This is all so anecdotal, so it’s hard to know what to make of it, but it certainly *seems* like an issue. Why did Mallex Smith implode? What the hell, Dan Vogelbach? Shed Long, now taking Kelenic’s roster spot – what happened to him even before his shin injury last year? Who’s holding the PD staff accountable for all of this, and if there is an innocent explanation (the big leagues are *hard*, bad luck, the marine layer, etc.), what is it, and how is IT going to get better going forward?
Game 59, Mariners at Angles
Robert Dugger vs. Shohei Ohtani, 6:35pm
Yesterday’s win was impressive – they got a good pitching performance from Justus Sheffield, who gave up 2 solo shots, and that was about it. They got runs from the top and bottom of the line-up, and they added on throughout the game after taking the lead on a big 3-R shot by Jake Fraley. And then the patched-together, 3rd-choice bullpen was absolutely dominant, setting the Angels down with ease.
I’ve said it before, but the M’s probably aren’t quite as weird as they look on TV. As we keep seeing, they’re a better hitting team on the road, and it’s pretty obvious. The M’s have a road wRC+ of 93 – that’s not good by any stretch, but it’s far from the worst in the league. It’s mediocre as opposed to awful. They hit for power, but struggle to get on base. It’s ok; it happens to lots of teams. But at home, they simply can’t catch a break. The new ball has cratered HRs, and a combination of the ball and new/deeper OF and IF positioning has turned more balls in play into outs.
This is a serious problem throughout baseball, but it’s especially severe in Seattle, where the small OF means that balls hit to the outfield don’t have any room to fall in. If a fly ball’s not a homer there, it’s not a potential double, the way it might be in Colorado. It’s just a can of corn. As such, the M’s look utterly helpless when batting at home – they’re hitting .191, 16 points lower than the second-worst home average in baseball. Their wRC+ is 83, and that’s with the “+” giving them bonus points for trying to hit there. Their wOBA is .275 at home and over .300 elsewhere. They hit for less power thanks to the marine layer and the ball, and they post a .240 BABIP because of the space available. It’s a tremendously distorting view, and we see it 81 times a year.
And the reverse is true for the pitchers. The M’s home/road splits for pitching are pronounced, but they’re dramatically different in BABIP. They’re not really a strikeout group no matter where they throw, but they give up a lot of hits/runs on the road, and not as many at home. If you’ve been around a while, all of this will give you some pretty powerful deja vu: This is the exact state of affairs before the M’s moved the outfield fences in. The run environment was too skewed; hitters wouldn’t sign there in free agency. Pitchers looked great at home, but got knocked around on the road. Something had to be done.
I can’t blame the M’s too much for this; that they couldn’t foresee a series of changes to the baseball might make their plan backfire isn’t really on them. But the M’s humidor, fence arrangement, IF/OF positioning, and the ever-changing ball make the game really, really weird there.
Perhaps no *pitcher* has benefited from the BABIP plunge as Justin Dunn. It’s something I’ve talked about a lot this season. But today brought word that Dunn’s been moved to the 10-day IL with shoulder soreness, which…no matter what, it’s always going to sound ominous. Robert Dugger’s been recalled a day after being optioned, and he’ll start tonight.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Fraley, RF
6: Kelenic, CF
7: Murphy, C
8: Trammell, LF
9: Walton, 2B
SP: Dugger
Do you have opinions on the new MLB rules, style of play, or robot umps? If so, or even if you’re ambivalent about them all, take this short survey by BP’s Russell Carleton – it’ll be used in a future BP article, and it should make for a cool set of data.
Tacoma lost to Salt Lake 10-5, as the Bees pulled away late, but Tacoma got an absolute bomb of a HR by Cal Raleigh, just to the RF side of the huge CF wall that only a few players have ever cleared. It gave the catcher a 15-game hitting streak. Darren McCaughan starts for Tacoma.
Arkansas lost to Wichita in walk-off fashion, 7-6. The game was the first real clunker from SP Ian McKinney who gave up 5 R in 3 IP thanks to 6 hits and 4 BB. Connor Lien hit two dingers for the Travs. Penn Murfee gets the ball for Arkansas tonight opposite Cole Sands of Wichita, a name that seems like it’s a reference to an industrial process or a slag heap or something.
Everett lost to Hillsboro 7-2. Emerson Hancock gave up 2 R in 3 IP, and then Michael Limoncelli gave up 3 (2 ER) in 2 1/3. Limoncelli’s been pushed, and command’s the last thing back after TJ, but he’s given up 4 walks to just 1 K thus far. Not worried about him, but it’s just not the start I’m sure he wanted. Tough to make your pro debut in High-A. George Kirby starts for the Frogs tonight. He’s been announced a couple times, but hasn’t pitched since May 14th; hope he’s back and pitching well.
San Jose demolished Modesto 9-1, as Adam Macko gave up 6 runs in 3 1/3. Noelvi Marte went 1-4, but made a pair of errors, and Cade Marlowe was 0-4 with a hat trick. That’s enough about that stupid game. No word on Modesto’s starter tonight.
Game 58, Mariners at Angels
Justus Sheffield vs. Griffin Canning, 7:10pm
After a rough loss yesterday, the M’s head out on the road to face the Angels. The Angels seem mired in yet another aimless season, this time due to injuries to stars like Anthony Rendon. But the main problem remains an enduring lack of production from their pitching staff. A really odd inability to develop pitchers has been the primary reason Mike Trout’s not sniffed the postseason in years, and it’s doomed multiple front offices, including Jerry Dipoto’s run as GM. Yes, yes, he battled with Mike Scioscia, but there’d be less battling if more of the starters they drafted clicked.
But before we get to today’s starter, the Angels’ latest potential home-grown savior, I want to talk about spin rate. It was all over Twitter today, as Gerrit Cole registered his lowest four-seam rate and by far the lowest spin rate/MPH (Bauer Units) measure of the year. Coupled with a Jon Heyman tweet about the league getting ready to crack down on sticky substances pitchers are using (and seriously, read this Travis Sawchick article about how he measured his own spin rate with and without various powders, goos, and glops), and people made the leap that maybe Cole was pitching au naturel, and his stuff was suffering for it. The experts tried to get people to downplay it, pointing out he’s had games like this in previous years, and small-sample hawkeye data can be pretty unreliable, but given that Cole was a guy who used to get a special sticky substance from the Angels’ own disgraced former clubbie, those calls for calm didn’t stop the speculation.
But this gets to something I’ve been stewing on for years, and wrote an article at BP about. Why is spin rate so important to pitchers? In Sawchick’s article, he says, “More spin means more Magnus effect, which is the invisible force governing most pitch movement.” But this isn’t quite right: active spin can lead to movement, but you can boost your spin rate by cutting the ball, which is how Garrett Richards can have one of the spinniest fastballs in the game, but well *below* average movement. If the idea is that spin is the raw material for Magnus-based movement, why not just measure – and stay with me here – Magnus-based movement? Given its correlation with velocity (more velo, more spin), it’s even harder to isolate the value that it can add absent a whole bunch of caveats.
This is why Marcus Stroman can be effective despite a sinker with above-average spin but below-average spin efficiency, for example. I looked at Kendall Graveman’s spin rate, partially out of curiosity and partly to see if his turbo-sinker was as high-spin as it looks. The answer: no, it’s not. Graveman’s sinker gets only average spin, and thus below-average Bauer units given its high velocity. And what’s more, that spin rate has gone *down* – and markedly – in recent years. I went and looked at perhaps the most famous turbo-sinker in the game, Blake Treinen’s, and the same pattern held: he had pretty good spin rates in his 2018 Oakland peak, but it’s dropped off in each year since, and is now in a statistical dead heat with Marco Gonzales’ non-turbo-sinker. In spin efficiency and Bauer units, Gonzales “beats” both Treinen and Graveman’s pitches handily. But, and I know this is a stat-focused blog, just *watch the pitches.*
Some of this has to do with the seam-shifted wake, the fact that another force can cause a pitch to move than just the Magnus effect. This seems particularly true for Stroman, for example, and may also be at play with Justus Sheffield, the M’s starter tonight. But whatever the reason, it’s not simply the case that spin leads directly to movement, and it’s not the case that spin (in and of itself) leads to effectiveness. Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff, or Bauer himself and Yu Darvish, have been very successful and create tons of spin. But they all throw really, really hard. Bauer gets a ton of movement, while Woodruff doesn’t. And pitchers like Jack Flaherty, Shane Bieber, and Blake Treinen can be successful despite average fastball spin.
Still, tell that to the pitchers. This season’s seen a ton of talk about cracking down on foreign substances. Mike Schildt’s press convo after his pitcher had his hat confiscated was the most famous example, but there’s constant chatter about the league taking balls to sample. Today’s word that they may begin, uh, doing something with all the evidence they presumably have plays into it. It seems that pitchers have seen what’s happened to Bauer and Cole’s spin rates over the years, and are trying new things to increase their grip on the ball. If a non-athlete reporter like Sawchick could add 400 rpms by using something, hey, what could they add? I’m sure a lot of pitchers are using stuff, but I keep thinking that if some of these new substances were that transformative, we’d see it in league-wide spin rates and movement patterns in a magnitude that would jump off the page. We DO see spin rate inching up, but then, so is velo. Movement’s up too, but as Rob Arthur mentioned, much of that could be due to the baseball being lighter.
Anyway, Griffin Canning’s a 25-year old righty with a high-ish spin four-seam fastball at 94, a hard slider at 88, and an even-harder change-up at 90 (I love the Felix-style hard change). He misses bats with all three, and generates a lot of fly balls, which should theoretically reduce his BABIP. That hasn’t actually happened yet, which is odd. What *has* happened – especially in 2021 – is that a bunch of those fly balls became home runs. He’s given up 10 in 8 starts thus far, over 2 per 9 innings. That’s not going to play, and thus he enters tonight with an ERA well over 5 and sits at replacement level by FIP despite a decent strikeout rate.
Is his HR/FB going to come down eventually? Yes, it pretty much has to. But it’s been high-ish in his first two years, and the fact that his walk rate’s up too suggests that he needs more than dinger regression to really become an effective starter.
Justus Sheffield has one of the lowest spin rates around, which was part of the reason he embraced the sinker last year. It’s not a great pitch at this point, but it allows him to get to his slider. One problem this year for him has been BABIP, the same thing that’s helped teammate Justin Dunn so much. Sheffield’s just not going to miss bats with his raw stuff, so to give up hits like it’s 1981 instead of 2021 is a problem. Why isn’t T-Mobile park’s freakish anti-BABIP power helping him? Well, it is. At home this year, he’s got a BABIP of .274. On the road, though…it’s .403.
While HRs aren’t a part of BABIP, I wanted to link to this Devan Fink article about HR rates by park, as it shows the magnitude of the drop-off in many parks, including Seattle’s. Fink tried to isolate the park by only looking at balls in play at 95+ mph and in specific angle ranges (as a previous article showed that these balls in play seemed the most impacted by the changes to the baseball). In Seattle, almost 60% of these balls in play were homers in 2019, but this year, just 43% have gone over the wall. A 16+ percentage point drop! And that’s less than the effect seen in Oakland, LA, and St. Louis! As we’ve talked about, Seattle’s OF is quite small, so a reduction in HRs doesn’t mean an increase in doubles and triples. Since moving the walls in, Seattle is *death* to 2B/3B. So, fewer HRs means more outs in play.
I keep thinking that the combined effect of the humidor and the new ball are having unpredictable or outsized impacts on balls in play. Seattle and the Mets’ Citi Field both showed dramatic drops from 2019-2021, but then, Fenway and Chase Field didn’t (Chase even saw *more* HRs this year), so I’m not sure. I just think MLB has made a number of changes simultaneously, making it both more likely that different parks will play radically differently from year to year and also making it harder to determine which change is doing what.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Kelenic, CF
6: Godoy, C
7: Trammell, LF
8: Fraley, DH
9: Walton, 2B
SP: Sheffield
Justus Sheffield’s got one of the lowest spin rates in the game, so now that his brother is in the big leagues, how do they compare? Well, Jordan Sheffield has one of the absolute highest rates in the game, ahead of Corbin Burnes and Garrett Richards.
Tacoma’s back home to host the Salt Lake Bees tonight. It’s another bullpen day, with Ryan Dull getting the start. Cal Raleigh’s got a 14-game hitting streak going. After a weird 2019 where he didn’t hit for much power in AAA (despite the two-HR game that got rained out in Tacoma) and then and awful 2020 MLB debut, Jo Adell of the Bees is going nuts, leading the PCL with 12 HRs already.
Arkansas beat Wichita 5-2 behind a stellar relief outing from Leon Hunter, who K’d 5 in 2 1/3 scoreless. Hunter was acquired in trade (for cash considerations) from Texas in late April. Tonight, Ian McKinney tries to keep his eye-opening season going; he’ll start for the Travs.
Everett lost to Hillsboro 6-2. The offense is struggling a bit without Julio Rodriguez, who’s busy in Olympic qualifying (and hitting 2 dingers in a recent game vs. Nicaragua). Emerson Hancock starts for the AquaSox tonight.
Modesto beat up on San Jose 10-5, as Noelvi Marte hit his sixth home run – this one an inside-the-park job. Cade Marlowe went 2-4 with 4 runs scored. No word on tonight’s starter.
Game 56, Athletics at (Injured) Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs. Chris Bassitt, 7:10pm
It’s a glorious day in the Northwest after a mostly-glorious holiday weekend. Hope you all managed to get out and enjoy the weather.
The M’s get their opening day starter back off the injured list today, but the M’s aren’t celebrating. Going TO the injured list is CF Kyle Lewis, a big part of an offense that could use all the help it can get. Taylor Trammell, red hot in Tacoma, returns, but he won’t be in CF. Instead, the M’s are giving the gig to Jarred Kelenic, as he’d played the position in previous years, and obviously if he’s able to do so at this level, he provides the team some valuable flexibility.
To make room, the M’s have optioned Robert Dugger back to Tacoma and waived Travis Blankenhorn, who was picked up by the Mets. In less than two months, Blankenhorn has been with the Twins, Dodgers, Mariners, and Mets organizations. It doesn’t have the Kafkaesque humor of the Jacob Nottinham M’s/Brewers situation, but it seems equally annoying and hard on one’s career. It’s great to be wanted, and it beats no one giving you a uniform at all, but I just hope he isn’t paying rent in like three different time zones simultaneously.
At the other end of the player distribution, we’ve got Mitch Haniger, who’s been red hot, and whose 138 wRC+ is easily the best on the team (Kyle Lewis’ 112 was second, which is why losing him is such a blow). If the M’s two struggling rookies – Taylor Trammell and Jarred Kelenic – find their stroke, or hell, even if they don’t, would the M’s look to move Haniger in trade? He’d be a fascinating player to value, given the combination of his age, club control, salary, etc. I think the M’s probably don’t unless they get a huge offer, but I do wonder if a team might see him as someone that could help them win a pennant race.
I think one complicating factor here is what to make of the minor leagues, and AAA in particular. We’ve talked about it a bit this year, but AAA uses the exact same baseball that MLB does, but it’s hard to know what to make of that when MLB keeps changing their ball. It seems like minor league teams like Tacoma are using up their 2020 balls, which makes sense, and also means the ball is different than the one MLB uses *now*. The league realignment/MLB takeover means that the old Pacific Coast League was shorn of its midwestern wing, a set of clubs without the altitude and other hitting-friendly park factors that came to be associated with the PCL. Thus, the AAA-West has a completely different run environment that AAA-East. It’s 1 full run per game higher in the West, for each team.
Because the MLB ball was made lighter, it’s coming off the bat harder, but because it’s less bouncy, it doesn’t fly as far. It’s lowered weight helps it spin more, which increases the Magnus effect causing the ball to bend and break. All of this has created havoc in MLB, where you’ve got the Mariners sitting with a .205 team average. But that’s not happening in AAA-West due to the slightly different ball and atmospheric/other conditions in effect. All of this has meant that it’s essentially impossible to know what to *make* of stats in AAA-West even setting aside the fact that all of them are small samples. Taylor Trammell hit .385, but what does that tell us? I don’t know. I’d love to figure this out, but for now, I just need to point out that these dramatically different environments make the usual translated stats or projections kind of useless.
The M’s face one of the more unheralded pitchers in the AL, Chris Bassitt. Once a high-floor back-of-the-rotation arm and a throw-in to the trade that brought Marcus Semien to Oakland, Bassitt’s become the de facto ace of the A’s rotation – a rotation beset by injuries during his time with the club. A former 16th-round pick, he’s a righty without big-time velo or raw stuff. If you were going to draw up a pitcher to get overlooked or discounted, this would be it. I’d say that kind of applies to Marco Gonzales, but let’s not forget: Marco was a first round draft pick and flew through the minors, pitching in the postseason a year after being drafted.
Bassitt moved up the White Sox system, making his debut in 2014, and then he got a brief look with the A’s in 2015 and then an injury-plagued 2016. He didn’t miss many bats and walked a few too many, which is not a great look. After his injury, I don’t think many would’ve considered him a likely rotation candidate, but the A’s have had a terrible run of injuries to their starters sandwiched around things like Frankie Montas’ long suspension for PEDs. Bassitt got that second chance, and since then, he’s been remarkable, going 22-12 with an ERA of 3.27. His FIP hasn’t been as impressed, but it’s coming around now, too. Bassitt’s currently striking out more than 1/4 of batters facing him, something that would’ve been ludicrous in 2015, and his walk rate has dropped every year since 2016. With the new ball and a spacious ballpark, he’s been stingy with home runs.
What’s the difference? A big part of it seems to be the cutter he added in 2018. He’s now got six distinct pitches – a four-seam, a sinker, a cutter, a slider, a change, and a slow, slow curve. Nothing jumps off the page, there are now freakish spin rates, no velo spikes, no wild movement – but the approach just works. To righties, he pitches off of his sinker, keeping the ball down, and then trying to get a whiff with the breaking stuff. To lefties, it’s a Marco Gonzales-style equal mix of the three hard pitches (four-seam, sinker, cutter), then some cambios and the curve.
That new cutter doesn’t look great judging by results – batters are hitting over .300 this year, about what they’ve always done off of it. But this different look seems to have unlocked the rest of his repertoire – his curve (and slider, when he throws it) are now real out-pitches despite not being all that different than they were in 2015-16. And his fastballs, the sinker in particular, plays completely differently when batters have to keep an eye out for a hard pitch breaking the opposite way. It’s a classic case of a new pitch making every OTHER pitch great, even if it doesn’t look great in isolation.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Hangier, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Fraley, RF
6: Kelenic, CF
7: Trammell, RF
8: Murphy, C
9: Walton, 2B
SP: Gonzales
Tacoma beat Reno 11-4 behind two Sam Travis long balls and a great start from Logan Verrett. Verrett gave up 1 R in 7 IP, striking out 4 and walking none. No word on the starter tonight.
Arkansas begins a series against the Wichita WindSurge. Alejandro Requena is on the mound for the Travs.
Everett’s back home to face the Hillsboro Hops. Matt Brash in on the mound for the AquaSox; he’s got 27 punch outs in 15 2/3 IP thus far.
Modesto opens a series with San Jose tonight. They’ll face Giants prospect Kyle Harrison, a 19-yo draft pick out of a Concord, CA HS… kind of cool he can begin his pro-career fairly close to home. He was a 3rd rounder in the 2020 draft, and has struck out 28 batters in his first 13 2/3 professional innings, which is kind of bonkers, even for 2021 baseball.